At Johns Hopkins University, the Institute for NanoBioTechnology is sort of a strange hybrid animal— a unique entity in academia. Founded in 2006, we are a virtual center that draws faculty membership from four divisions – the medical school, engineering school, school of arts and sciences and from public health.

Four different divisions comprise INBT.

Two faculty members, Peter Searson, the Joseph R. and Lynn C. Reynolds Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Denis Wirtz, the Theophilus H. Smoot Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, started INBT. They thought it made sense to combine the efforts of people in engineering with people working in the medical and basic sciences as well as in public health to better solve problems in health care. We have more than 220 affiliated faculty members. There are no other centers or institutes at Hopkins with as many participants from as many different disciplines.

Any faculty member can become a member of INBT; they just have to have an interest in incorporating nanobiotechnology—or science at the scale of just a few atoms—into their research. Researchers at INBT are working on everything from drug delivery systems to solving problems in basic science and engineering using nanobiotechnology.

Physically, INBT is located on the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus in Suite 100 of Croft Hall. That’s where our administrative offices are and some of our faculty members have laboratories in this building. But our research occurs wherever our faculty members are working, and much of that is at the School of Medicine. In fact, nearly half of our members come from the medical school. Faculty members in other divisions are mostly likely collaborating with people at the School of Medicine.

At INBT, we search for funding opportunities for our members and offer small seed grants that help collaborators launch projects. Sometimes these projects are later funded and sustained by larger federal grants. We feel good about helping new ideas find “legs”.

In addition, we train up-and-coming scientists and engineers from high school through the postdoctoral level in our affiliated labs. These include short-term summer programs as well as highly competitive government funded research experiences and fellowships that last several years. INBT is educating the next generation of researchers who will solve problems at the interface of science, engineering and medicine. Our graduate students who fulfill specific requirements are awarded a Certificate of Advanced Study in NanoBioTechnology.

We have global outreach programs as well. INBT has funded research teams to India and Tanzania to solve engineering problems in local communities. Sometimes the challenges are medical, and sometimes they are purely engineering, but the teams much use local materials and resources to accomplish their goals.

Finally, we have industry affiliations. By working with companies in the U.S. and worldwide, we are developing training opportunities for our students that result in the development of new knowledge and hopefully new patented and marketable products. We don’t want to keep our innovations in the lab; we want to bring them to people for the benefit of humankind.

So in a nutshell, that’s what INBT is all about. To learn more about some of our specific programs and about some of the other centers we have launched under the INBT “brand”, read the other articles in this series. You can also watch this video about INBT.

This article is part of a series of brief reports on INBT and its different components and programs. Together, we hope these articles will help readers inside and outside of the Johns Hopkins University community to understand what INBT is and what we do.

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